Thu, 09 Dec 2010

It's two loosely related topics: exploring the /proc filesystem, and
how to use it to find information on a running process; and several
ways to get stack traces from Python programs.

This (as well as
Troubleshooting
part I) arose from a problem we had at work, where we use
Linux plug computers (ARM-based Linux appliances) running Python
scripts. It's not uncommon for Python networking scripts to go into
never-never-land, waiting forever on a network connection without
timing out. Since plug computers tend not to be outfitted with the
latest and greatest tools like gdb and debug versions of libraries,
we've needed to find more creative ways of figuring out what
processes are doing to make sure our programs are ready for anything.